OMG, that is awful. I know so little about gardening down here but I know that is just wrong! I see so many of these butchered stumps on my drive to work - whole yards filled with the remnants of this kind of "pruning".

Anyone know of a good site that shows the right way to prune? We have two, a white and a pink, and I bought a red "Victor", I think it is. The red is a dwarf bush. I have been afraid to do anything because I don't want to do the wrong thing. Any info would be appreciated.

Wing, our local expert and newspaper columnist Tom MacCubbin says don't do anything. There is no need to prune a crape myrtle EVER, unless some branches are in the way. You can snip off the dead flower heads if you really want to, but even that isn't necessary.

Somebody a couple of decades back decided that cutting crapes back severely would make them bloom more heavily. It doesn't. It just results in poor stubby trunks that get enormously big around with tiny little tops of leaves and flowers. I call them technicolor broccoli. Positively grotesque, and you can't seem to make anyone understand how ugly and unnecessary it is.

Landscapers are notoriously bad about doing this. Left to their own devices, crape myrtles have a very nice, full shape, and many varieties will become beautiful tall trees with many more blooms than their heavily pruned neighbors. And the weeping ones are utterly ruined by pruning, losing their graceful arching branches almost completely.

My suggestion is sit back and enjoy your crapes and if they don't encroach on anything, don't prune them at all.

Help stomp out crape murder.

Marcia

If I remember right, don't you have a line of crepe myrtles down the side of your house? I remember someone posting a picture of them and we went out and bought two of them! I dearly love red so I went back and bought the little bush. I don't know why it hasn't grown much since I planted it. It is between to queen palms but gets all day sun. Maybe I need to fertilize more.

I got very discouraged trying to garden because everything I did seemed to not turn out well! If it doesn't drown in the summer, it freezes in the winter. I am used to Massachusetts where you plant, feed, weed and voila!

After the freeze last week, it looks like I am going to have a lot of empty spaces so maybe I can get a "do over" and do it right this time.

I've been gardening my parents house for a while now and it seems that the maintenance crew is always finding ways to mess up the garden. They sheared back all my seedling vines in the garden bed last spring, and after I corrected the bad pruning on the crape myrtles by giving them a fountain like shape, my mom loved it so much she convinced them not to shear them from now on. Two weeks went by before they couldn't take it anymore and sheared them anyway.

I have 3 of them in my side yard and have not trimmed them at all for 7 or 8 years - not even the seed heads because now they are way too high to reach. These are beautiful trees and I just hate to see them pruned back so hard. I love the dappled shade they provide.

Kate

Here's a picture of my unpruned crape myrtles. Even without leaves I think they are pretty. I would be horrified if someone came along and cut them back to the nubs!

Kate

Look what a pretty shape your trees have, Kate! Come summer, they will be stunning, as always! And I love these trees in winter, too...many of them have such sculptural trunks. They are beautiful even bare.

Marcia

What a horrifying photo laura !
I have tried to convince people not to cut theirs but one guy told me that's why his has such big , beautiful blooms !
wing560 - below is an excellent link to print out and keep .
I think this will help !

Here is a link that might be useful: Stop Crape Murder!

Thank you, gatormom! I printed it out and I see I haven't been doing too badly. I have been pruning the suckers and the cross branches. Try to keep the old blooms trimmed but I am definitely not tall enough to get them all.

Solstice, how old are your trees? They look big or is it the angle of the photo? We need shade on the kitchen side of the house. Are crepes pretty stable in a hurricane?

I don't think there's anything wrong with pollarding if it's done right. There's an ancient history behind the technique and it is good for creating certain effects. I think it's overdone though around here with crepe myrtles, and done wrongly most of the time, like in the crepes in the picture.

Those are beautiful trees, Kate. I hope my Apalachees one day look so good.

Bill

I'll say it the way a local mastergardener in my community
said. Thre are many size crepe myrtles. If you want your crepe to be small then plant a small one or a medium size.
Some people do not have the room or they rather have a small one. So plant the right size tree to accomodate what
your needs are or your wants.
The trunk of the crepe is beutiful,similar to the Guava tree. I made a walking stick out of one branch and it is beautiful.
I have planted white,pink,hot pink,red,lavender in several
places. They are very eazy to propogate and I just keep planting,LOL. My driveway is several hundreds feet long and I have been planting crepes all along the drive.
Wing,just plant, feed, weed and voila! Remenber crepes look bare in winter but soon they'll give you beutiful blooms.
You stated "After the freeze last week, it looks like I am going to have a lot of empty spaces so maybe I can get a "do over" and do it right this time." well you may not need to do one. May of the plants that looks like they are gone will probably come back with the return of warmer weather. You need to leave them alone and wait. No prooning
nor fertilizing.
What I continue to do is weeding the beds in anticipation of the return of spring. Also water the plants,do'nt let them get too dry.
No prooning of crepe!
Just my thoughts.
Felix

My trees were planted long before we moved into this house. I think they were put in by the builder so it would have been around 1992. We've been here since 1998 and they haven't been severely trimmed since then. About every 4 or 5 years I do a minor pruning but it's just to shape them up. They are pretty aren't they?

Wing, they are as tall as they look. These trees are at least 20' tall, probably taller. During H. Charley, the tops were almost touching the ground they bent so far, but they came out of it just fine.

Kate

Crapes are one of the top rated trees to choose for hurricanes .
There are hundreds of colors , shapes and sizes available so it can be easy to find the right tree for the look you want .
Do your research first so you know what names you will be viewing .
Give them plenty of room to display their beauty .
I actually saw a male Cardinal eating the brown Crape seeds . That's a good enough reason for me to leave the trees alone after their final bloom .

Wing, gardening in Florida is always a learning experience, even for those of us who are natives. Trial and error are the rule of the day, because every section of the state is a different zone, and every yard a different microclimate. Your best bet is to observe what your neighbors are having success with, and to find a nursery with INFORMED employees (oh, how difficult that can be!) to help you with selections. Once you get backbone plantings in place that are stable and thriving, experimenting with unknown plants is a bit less daunting. You haven't wiped out your whole yard if they don't make it, in other words.

Your little bushy crape might not be a tree form. As mentioned above, there are many types, and some stay small naturally. Without knowing what you have, it's hard to tell if yours is a smaller variety or not. I know one thing, though. I have never had to fertilize a crape myrtle. They are so well adapted for our climate (most of them) that they seem to do fine on their own. I guess some extra food might speed up the process, but they should do at least some growing all by themselves.

Good luck with yours, and with your garden in general. You will eventually hit on the perfect things for you yard, I'm sure. And you can always ask here about certain plants you are interested in.

Marcia

Marcia, my little crepe is a "Victor", I looked it up online before I bought it. It is a bush and grows to about eight feet. Very disease resistant. I hope it doesn't freeze and die this week like some of the other things I planted!

I put in a tibouchina and an allamanda bush about three years ago. I KNOW they are not cold tolerant but I just fell in love with both of them. This is the third winter - first year I cut back to the roots after a freeze without waiting to see how far it would sprout, last year I waited and only lost a little. This year I wouldn't be surprised if they are dead in the ground! I covered them and they are on the south side of the house with full afternoon sun.

I live in Spring Hill, on a golf course. We are on the side of a hill, about half way down, and have frost on the lawn when other parts of town don't. Our house is probably 60-70 feet up from the bottom of the hill where the street is. I think we are a cold spot with not a heck of a lot of stores, parking lots, etc. to hold the heat. And, oh boy, do we ever get wind here! Lots of challenges!

Oh my gosh, those poor crepes. I've never seen any pruned that bad.

I love my crepes. The trunks have their own beauty and the flowers are delicately sweet.

FlowerLady